


you know i want you.

by bigbadlesbo



Category: The Greatest Showman (2017)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-12 03:04:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13538337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigbadlesbo/pseuds/bigbadlesbo
Summary: Again, another Anne/Phil fic, but Phil is a cis girl and they're SUPER fucking gay jesus christ





	you know i want you.

**Author's Note:**

> I love this ship more than anything im probably gonna write like 50 different versions of it

Anne is in love with Ms. Carlyle, and her heart catches in her throat. She doesn’t go to her, doesn’t go to Mr. Barnum, doesn’t go to her own flesh and blood, W.D., she goes to the woman she knows she can trust about feelings she doesn’t understand. 

Lettie, who is fixing her beard in the mirror, applying eye makeup and laughing at something Charles said, but Anne didn’t quite catch. Lettie, who Anne saw as a sister figure, maybe a mother, and Anne adores her to death that she knows if she can go to anyone, it’s Lettie. 

“Lettie, can I speak to you privately?” She’s always respected Charles but she gives him a look that desperately pleas that she needs to be alone, so Charles hops down from the chair and gets ready for the show. When he’s gone, she whispers, “It’s about Phil.” 

“Do you have feelings for the girl?” Lettie asks nonchalantly - and Anne’s heart skips a beat and hammers against her ribs at the same time. “I see the way you two look at each other.” 

Anne smiles weakly, knowing that Lettie would catch on. The brief eye contact they held for what felt like eternity when they first met, and the way Phil’s eyes grazed her face as they were introduced, the breathless look she had, and Anne’s smirk in return. 

“It’s wrong,” Anne mumbles. “It’s wrong on so many levels, but I have feelings for a woman. A white woman, at that, Lettie!”

“She disguised herself as male,” Lettie says and looks at her, really looks at her, with serious eyes and a small smile. “How do you think she got so successful? No way a woman would ever be cared for unless she presented more as male.” Lettie goes back to fixing herself. “Are you attracted to her since she presents as more of a male, or are you actually attracted to Phil Carlyle?” 

“I don’t know,” she whimpers, and puts her head in her hands. “Phil is such an amazing woman. She got us a meeting with the queen tomorrow, she gives me those looks, it drives me insane.” 

“Showtime, ladies,” Anne clams up, recognizing the voice that haunts her every day, and she turns and sees Phil, smiling at them both. “Let’s go.” 

“Try not to fall tonight,” Lettie whispers into Anne’s ear, and Anne has to hide the blush that’s rising up to her cheeks. 

If only Lettie knew she already fell, or is in the process of falling. 

 

Anne almost messes up her performance, but she shakes it off, and she doesn’t end up dead on the floor. W.D. flashes her that concerned look that only her brother knows how to do, but she assures him it’s fine, and it’s Phil that pushes it. 

“Anne?” she asks in a soft voice. “I saw you.” 

“What about it, Ms. Carlyle?” Anne asks timidly, keeping her head down and eyes averted. 

“You almost fell tonight, is there something going on? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Ms. Carlyle, no need to worry,” she says curtly. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to go to bed early so we can go and meet the queen.” 

“Okay, then,” Phil excuses her and Anne wipes sweat from her brow. It was unnatural for Anne to feel this way. She needed to go back, to before Phil came to the show. 

She wishes Mr. Barnum had never met the woman. 

“She’s been writing plays under the disguise of a male,” Mr. Barnum boasts. “Everyone’s been tricked into thinking the Carlyle’s have a son, but they have a clever and amazing daughter. She fits right in with us.” 

“Oh, stop it, P.T.,” Phil laughs. “Everyone, you can call me Phil. I don’t really care for my birth name, but the fake name I go under is Philip, so Phil is just fine.” 

 

The next time they’re together, not alone, but together, Ms. Jenny Lind is performing her opera, and Phil’s hand brushes against hers for a fraction of a second, but Anne still feels it. 

There is no logical way it was on purpose, Anne reasons. An accident. 

But Phil’s hand does it again, brushes against hers, and she lets her hand go limp, and Phil takes her hand in her own and holds it.

Anne lets a breathe out, one she had been holding for quite a long time, and smiles slowly. 

Anne falls in love with Phil Carlyle then. She knows it, feels it in her heart. And it hurts a million times more when she feels Phil’s hand move abruptly, and she sees who’s watching them: an older couple, judging, eyeing the two of them with hard and cold eyes.

She wants to be angry. But she knows it’s wrong. She still can’t hide the frustration and sadness she feels, so she leaves Phil’s side. 

“I’m in love with her,” Anne tells Lettie. “It’s sick and it’s wrong and it hurts, but I’m in love with her.” Anne sobs in Lettie’s arms, and Lettie pets her hair affectionately and doesn’t say a word. 

 

Mr. Barnum left Anne a ticket to the local theatre, something she’s always wanted to go to, always wanted to see, but she feels nervous. She goes up to the booth and says as confident as she can, “Mr. Barnum said he left a ticket for me?” 

The man slides two towards her. 

“T-This must be a mistake,” Anne takes them. “I believe, there’s only meant to be one.” 

“There’s meant to be two,” Phil’s voice cuts through. “I didn’t think you’d come with if I asked.”

It doesn’t take much for Anne to be convinced, because she wants to go, so she lets Phil take her arm like they were a couple and she was a gentleman and walk up the stairs alongside her. "I've always wanted to go to the theatre," she tells Phil. 

As they ascend up the staircase, Anne hears a name she doesn’t recognize, but Phil freezes in her tracks and she has to stop with her. 

“Mother, Father...” Phil’s lips move to a tight smile. “This is Anne Wheeler.” 

The conversations hurts Anne to her core, and Phil calls after her, but she leaves, she leaves until she’s at the only place she feels at home. 

Phil doesn’t come after her, but she didn’t expect her to. 

 

“Anne.” Phil grabs her arm, and she’s forced to look at her. She wanted to run away, she had spent time avoiding Phil, and yet she still caught her. 

“Anne, please look at me.” 

“What’s your game?” Anne spits, “What’s the idea? Why are you doing this?” 

“I don’t have a game,” Phil answers honestly, a little hurt by Anne’s outburst, but Anne can’t bring herself to care. She’s in love with the woman in front of her, and she doesn’t know what to do about it or how to feel. “I just want to talk to you.” 

“About what?” Anne’s incredulous now, wants to rip her hair out, bites her lips and forces the scream back inside. “About Jenny Lind’s performance? About the way you speak to me, the way you look at me?” 

“I’m sorry if I was out of line,” Phil immediately apologizes. “It was wrong of me to take your hand without your permission. I shouldn’t have - shouldn’t have done that. I can take my resignation to P.T. if you would feel more comfortable without me around.” 

“How do you feel for me?” Anne croaks. She hadn’t realized, but tears poured down her cheeks.

“I’d say I have feelings for you, Ms. Wheeler, and I know it’s wrong -"

“Because I’m black?” Anne mumbles. 

“No, because we’re both women. But I don’t care what people think, I like you Anne, I do. I think I started to fall for you once my eyes met with yours.” 

“We couldn’t be together,” Anne says. “We can’t. It’s wrong.” 

“What do you care what people think of you?” Phil touches her face, moves her hair behind her ear. “If it’s just you and me, who cares what the small minded people think?” 

“You don’t get looked at the way people look at me. I’m just a black girl, and if I were with a white woman? The looks, the comments...” Anne feels like she’s hyperventilating, but forces her ground. She can’t lose in front of Phil. She refuses. 

“I want you.” Phil says. “I mean it. You know I want you.” 

Anne needs to walk away. She wants badly to be with Phil, and she feels guilty. She isn’t supposed to want anything, especially something she could never have, not in a billion years. 

She wants it, but she knows she’ll never have it. 

 

Mr. Barnum leaves the circus for a tour with Jenny Lind, leaving Phil in charge of the rest of the group and the shows, which she tries to handle as gracefully as she can.

Protesters come in to boo at the freaks or throw things at them, but Phil ushers them all to safety. It's when a particularly stubborn group of protesters hit Phil and attack W.D., and Anne hears shouting from the stage. 

"It's a fight," Lettie says, and the rest of the troupe charges at them while Anne stays behind. 

She doesn't know much about how the fire started, she just knows she needed to get out of there quick. All she can hear and feel is the fire and smoke, but she makes her way out and runs immediately to her brother. "W.D.!" she exclaims, "Thank God you're okay!" 

Mr. Barnum rushes to the scene and asks frantically if anyone's seen Phil, and he goes in after her.

Anne realizes that when Phil didn't see her with the rest of the group, she went chasing after her. 

Anne screams are deafening over the sound of the crash of the building and the flickering of the flames. Mr. Barnum is carrying Phil in his arms and he drops her onto the ground, his ear next to her mouth listening for breathing. Anne can only look on in despair as she watches someone who loves her lay unconscious on the floor. 

"She's breathing," he says. "Get her on the stretcher, please hurry!" 

Phil is taken to the hospital and the rest of the troupe hold and cry onto one another as the building, the circus, their home, burns to the ground. 

 

W.D. convinces Anne to go to sleep for the night as they retire to their cots, the adrenaline gone and the tired sinks into her bones. She wants to go see Phil, more than anything, but she knows she can't protest against her brother. Anne's dreams are full of her trying to save Phil from the fire and failing every time.

She wakes up before W.D. does and silently gets ready and dressed without waking him. She needed to see Phil's face, and her breath, and see that she hadn't died overnight. The guilt would eat her alive for the rest of her life if she knew that Phil went in after Anne and she died because of it. 

Anne gulps at the thought, and walks to the hospital. 

"I'm here to see Ms. Carlyle," she says. 

"Over here," the woman leads her to Phil's bed, and she looks so battered and bruised but peaceful at the same time, her eyes closed. "We don't know when she'll wake up." 

She stays by Phil's side for a week. 

On the last day, after many visits from Lettie (she visited on the third day, telling Anne that Phil really must have loved her and Anne crying into her arms), Mr. Barnum (who visited every day, sometimes short visits and longer visits, begging Phil to wake), and W.D. throughout the week to check on the two of them, she took Phil's cold hand in her own and whisper-begged God to bring Phil back. 

"I want you," Anne says and she sounds probably as desperate as she looks. "You know I want you." Phil's hand twitches in her own, and Anne gasps from the shock. "Phil?" she whispers. "Phil." 

Phil's eyes open slowly, and they glimmer for a moment once they realize that Anne is holding onto her. "You're here." 

"Yeah," Anne doesn't try to keep the crying hidden. "Yeah." She lifts her face closer, bringing them together, and kisses her as gentle as she can. She feels like Phil will break if Anne handles her roughly, so they kiss, soft and careful, and Anne's tears are hitting Phil's cheeks and nose, but neither of them care. 

'I love you' hangs heavy in the air between them, and they don't have to say it to both know.

She spends a lot of time telling Phil what she missed: how Mr. Barnum carried her safely back outside, and how the circus had been destroyed, and she knows Phil isn't the strongest, but she lightly slaps her upside the head. "You idiot," she says. "Don't you ever scare me like that again. I'm not worth it." 

"I'd go into a million burning buildings for you, Ms. Wheeler," she replies. Anne can't help but giggle and blush at that. "You're more than worth it." 

It's the first time Anne believes it.

They embrace again, and Anne melts into their kiss.


End file.
